History 498—Protest Movements in U.S. History

My List of Books on Left Protest Movements and Radicalism

For DECEMBER 2, we will be reading the assignments originally assigned for November 25

On-line assigned readings—Click this to access assigned readings for particular dates within the semester, and for transferring the assigned pagination from a Zinn’s The Twentieth Century to People’s History

Haymarket

Haymarket Website A featured website of the Chicago Historical Society—great links to documents from the events, oral histories, drawings, artifacts of the events
Haymarket Massacre Archive From the Anarchist Archives. Bibliography, photos, primary documents
Illinois Labor History Website with directions to the sites involved in the events at Haymarket as well as articles and a short story on the martyrs
Memories of Haymarket documents from Haymarket "martyrs" and from the police who targeted them
Excerpt, Frank Donner, Protectors of Privilege great material on police, repression in wake of Haymarket
George Engel on Anarchism
Oscar Neebe, the Crimes I have Committed

Populist Movement

· Links to Documents on Populism

· Excerpts from Populist Speeches and Documents

· Mary Lease, speech : good for how women carved out a role in the Populist Movement

· Populist My Country ‘Tis of These Cain and Abel Revisited.htm

· Excerpt from Richard Iton, Solidarity Blues on racism and the Populist Movement

· The Progressive Populist is a modern organization, which seeks to revive a populist campaign, minus the racial prejudice that was embedded in some of populism; there are numerous interesting links

· An organization that inherits the populist economic critique: Programs on Corporations, Law and Democracy:

o --see articles section on this website for interesting perspective, for example: We Gave Our Sovereignty to Big Biz

· The World Trade Organization and Globaloney Jim Hightower is probably one of the best speakers who uses the original populist style and critique, but on modern issues. Here’s an example of one of his populist style speeches on the WTO

· Money: A Populist Perspective --Lawrence Goodwyn and William Greider

o Remarks that suggest the populist movement is still relevant to the future of democracy

o ==remarks presented on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the Populist Sub-Treasury Plan for financial reform, Dec. 9, 1989 from the Populist-Progressive website

Anti-Imperialists

The best website on the internet for the Anti-Imperialists: BOONDOCKS website
Anti-imperialist poems by the author of the song "America the Beautiful"
Mark Twain’s The War Prayer
For more on Mark Twain and anti-imperialism
website with links to numerous countries and their stories that relate to U.S. imperialism http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/
Smedley Butler on Imperialism
Soldiers’ Letters from the Philippines War
A Reply to Rudyard Kipling’s "White Man’s Burden"

Socialism

· Excerpt from Mary Jo Buhle, Women in American Socialism

· Mahlon Barnes, Trade Unions’ Role in Socialism

· Quotations from Eugene Debs

· Speech by Eugene Debs

· Socialist Party Platform

· How I became a socialist agitator – Kate Richards O’Hare

· Class Ceiling by Scott Nearing: death vs. class mobility

· The Socialist and the Suffragist by Gilman

· Black Radical A. Philip Randolph

· Mother Jones letter to Mrs. Potter Palmer

· War of the Classes--how I became a socialist—by Jack London (the famous author of Call of the Wild and White Fang)

· The Question of the Maximum by Jack London–questions of how much development the world can sustain

· The Autobiography of Mother Jones

· Excerpt from Eugene V. Debs, Citizen and Socialist

· Selected Photographs of Eugene V. Debs as orator, including one from a Chicago speech

IWW

· 19 documents from the IWW

· Jim Crutchfield’s IWW page – links to documents, other material

· Joe Hill, IWW’s troubadour—see selected songs on the website

· Trial of Big Bill Haywood

· Why I am A Member of the IWW

· Preamble to the IWW, 1905

· The Autobiography of Mother Jones

· The IWW home page including IWW Reading Room and Library

· Bisbee Deportation of 1917

· Publications of the IWW used in the Bisbee Deportation case of 1917

· Lucy Parsons, Knights of Labor activist and anarchist, became a member of the IWW

· Memories of Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, the “Rebel Girl” (speaking at Northern Illinois University in 1962)

· http://fletcher.iww.org/history.html A treasure-trove of documents and links. Site currently down, but might be back on line soon

· T-Bone Slim Pens “The Lumberjack’s Prayer”

· The Paterson Strike Pageant Program

Postwar Red Scare:

· Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer Makes “The Case against the Reds”

· Red Scare (images and documents-vast collection)

· “I Glanced Up—The Statue of Liberty!”: Emma Goldman Describes Her Deportation in the Era of the Red Scare

· Going to Jail for Saying Lenin was smart

· “The Making of a Red” –satire on how easy it was to label someone as unpatriotic

· Red Scare- major set of photographs from the Literary Digest, a mainstream publication, depicting the great fear of subversion

Sacco/Vanzetti Case

· The Sacco and Vanzetti case- a summary and links

· Felix Frankfurter on Sacco and Vanzetti-essay from The Nation (1927) with links about the nature of the judicial system and why this case was remembered by legal scholars and historians and activists through the 1990s

· “They Are Dead Now”: Eulogy for Sacco and Vanzetti

· “Save Sacco and Vanzetti”: The Defense Committee’s Plea

· “March On, O Dago Christs”: Sacco and Vanzetti Memorialized

· “We Stand Defeated America”: Sacco and Vanzetti in John Dos Passos’ U.S.A.

· Ballad for Sacco and Vanzetti Joan Baez’ ballad

· The Trial of Sacco and Vanzetti

· The Sacco and Vanzetti case- a summary and links

1930s:

· Harlan: Working under the Gun Harlan Coal Strike of 1931—harbinger of 1930s labor strife

· Which Side Are You On? (legendary song from the Harlan County Miners Strike)

· 40 Documents and lesson plan on the Bonus March

· FBI file on the Bonus Expeditionary Force http://foia.fbi.gov/bonmarch.htm

· One of many, many files—see the long list on this Freedom of Information site-- either of groups or famous persons, that historians and activists have forced the FBI to release in the wake of the Freedom of information Act of the 1970s. These files indicate the continued FBI repression against protest movements. The Bonus March, as the chapter indicates, was a group of veterans who were determined to get aid during the Depression. Yet the army was used to repress their movement. Many of the documents from the 1930s shows the enormous courage people took, despite repression, to express their rights.

· Unemployed Organizing in the Great Depression –oral history

· Unemployed Councils of the 1930s –oral history

· “Like a Thick Wall”: Blocking Farm Auctions in Iowa

· Prelude to “Bloody Thursday” in the 1934 San Francisco Strike

· Congress Investigates the 1934 San Francisco Strike -- stunning stories of the degree of class warfare, the ammunition harbored by employers, and the determination of working class to fight back

· SHORTER WORK WEEK AS THE SOLUTION TO THE GREAT DEPRESSION

The popular solution to the Great Depression was the 30 hour work week, which passed the Senate in 1933, and seemed the destiny of the nation…What happened.? Site has polemical commentary, but cites historical research.

The Great Mass Organizing Drives of the era

· Student Activism in the 1930s Students in the Peace Movement of the 1930s, Reform by student movements

· Excerpt from Robin D.G. Kelley, “Comrades, Praise Gawd for Lenin and Them!”

· Flint Sit-Down audio Gallery—excerpts from Oral History

· “Right After That They Walked Out”: Alice Wolfson Recalls the Origins of the CIO

· “We Are Americans!”: The Homestead Workers Issue a Declaration of Independence in 1936

· “I Was Able to Make My Voice Really Ring Out”: The Women’s Emergency Brigade in the Flint Sit-Down Strike

· “That Broke Down the Ethnic Barriers”: A Steelworker Describes the Decline of Ethnic Hostility in the 1930s

· "The Wagner Bill is behind you!"

· “Right After That They Walked Out”: Alice Wolfson Recalls the Origins of the CIO

· “We Are Americans!”: The Homestead Workers Issue a Declaration of Independence in 1936

· “That Broke Down the Ethnic Barriers”: A Steelworker Describes the Decline of Ethnic Hostility in the 1930s

· “This Is the Pressure That They Used”: Genora Dollinger Recalls the Flint Sit-Down Strike

· “I Was Able to Make My Voice Really Ring Out”: The Women’s Emergency Brigade in the Flint Sit-Down Strike

· “Hello, Mama. We’re makin’ history.” Cartoon on the sit-downs

· “Susie Steno”: A Union’s View of Clerical Workers

· Margaret Darin-- Union Pioneer in Westinghouse Electric

· “The Man . . . Died on My Lap”: One Women Recalls the Memorial Day Massacre of 1937

· 1938 Pecan Shellers Strike (Texas—women at the bottom of the system strike –great primary documents

· The Indispensable Ally: Black Workers and the Formation of the CIO—perspective by Bill Fletcher

· Teacher Lesson Plan: Using Oral History: This lesson presents social history content and topics through the voices of ordinary people. It draws on primary sources from the American Memory Collection, American Life Histories, 1936-1940.

· Cartoonists on the Picket Line: The Walt Disney Studio Strike

· How did we really get the 40 hour work week? http://www.timesizing.com/404040.htm

· Fair Labor Standards Act—the statute The Fair Labor Standards Act and Migratory Agricultural Workers The effects of leaving out migratory workers from the child labor and hours provisions of the New Deal (see 1940s dates for more on FLSA and exclusions)

Radicals and repression of the “McCarthy” period

· Hollywood Blacklist- a summary

· List of 200 organizations on the Attorney General’s Subversive List, 1950

· Enemies from Within: McCarthy and Truman Exchange Views – on the paranoia of the era

· Prosecuting and Defending Communists == trials of Communists in 1950s

· Hollywood: Red Nightmare and He Must Be a Communist http://carmen.artsci.washington.edu/propaganda/video/index.html

· Anti-Communist Hollywood propaganda

· “A Damaging Impression of Hollywood Has Spread”: Hollywood mogul testifies before HUAC

· Friendly Witnesses explain WWII pro-Stalin movies

· Material on Joseph McCarthy: http://webcorp.com/mccarthy/mccarthypage.htm

· Hear Senator McCarthy: http://www.cwrl.utexas.edu/~mcnicholas/E309-Spring98/assign2/military/mcarthy.html

· The American 1950s: Excellent site on the literature and culture of the Cold War. Loaded with material

· Howard Zinn on the history of the FBI: http://mediafilter.escape.com/MFF/FBI.html

· The McCarthy Witchhunt connects homosexuality and subversion of government

· They Want to Muzzle Opinion – John Lawson on HUAC

· You are the Un-Americans; Paul Robeson’s testimony before HUAC

· Lilian Hellman refuses to cooperate with HUAC

· Pete Seeger refuses to “sing” for McCarthy

· Bill Mandel Confronts HUAC in 1960 –by 1960, Mandel’s courage to confront HUAC left him in contempt, but he was contemptuous of the whole proceeding; see it also on film

FBI’s COINTELPRO operation: (it’s operation to neutralize dissenting voices) http://www.derechos.net/paulwolf/cointelpro/cointel.htm

FBI files: see the secret police spying on dissenters, 1000s of files http://www.newstrench.com/01secret/01secret.htm

· Howl by Alan Ginsberg --beatnik poem on the Mad, Mad world of repression; at the time, this poem was censored

Movement Music

· Two songs that show why railroad robber/outlaw Jesse James was a folk hero

· (Woody Guthrie tribute to James) Irwin Silber’s folk song

· “Music Can Make You Feel Like You’re Not Quite So Helpless:” Pete Seeger on People’s Music

· Songs of Woody Guthrie Songs of the Dust Bowl, labor struggles, unemployment.

· This Land is Your Land, original lyrics (including those you won’t sing in grade school)

· Pretty Boy Floyd (comparing bankers to robbers)

· Tom Joad (Ode to famous protagonist in The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck)

· Sixteen Tons

· Hispano Music and Culture of the Northern Rio Grande

· Songs from the Great Depression 100s of songs, including:

· I Don’t Want Your Millions Mister by Jim Garland

· I Hate the Company Bosses Sarah Ogun Gunning – a different type of “country” music

· Northern California Folk Songs from the 1930s

GI Forum: Organizing Mexican Americans

"Our People Were Dedicated": Organizing with the American G.I. Forum
"Our First Poll Tax Drive": The American G.I. Forum Fights Disenfranchisement of Mexican Americans in Texas
"All We Are Seeking Here Is Equal Opportunity": The American G.I. Forum Desegregates a Texas Community's Schools
Fighting Discrimination in Mexican American Education
"To Have Our Own Lawyers Fight Our Own Cases": The Origins of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund
"Judged by Your Peers": Fighting Discrimination in Texas Court Rooms

American Indian Movement

“Self Determination of Free Peoples”: Founding Documents of the American Indian Movement (AIM)

Feminism

· History of Feminist Movements in the U.S.

· Women and Social Movements in the U.S. Lots of primary documents from women’s history; has a teacher’s corner on how to use these in the classroom as a unit. Materials on politics, work, strikes, race and sexuality; terrific photos and documents from the Lawrence Massachusetts strike of 1912 and the Shirtwaist strike of 1909-1910.

· Votes for Women, an on-line exhibit (background) and Exhibit

· Starving for Women’s Suffrage: “I Am Not Strong after These Weeks”

· Jailed for Freedom: woman suffragist remembers prison

· Why Women Should Vote By Jane Adams

· What It Would be Like if Women Won by Gloria Steinem

1960s

---see my 1960s page for more